10 Top Mobile Application Development Platforms

Mobile application development is more important to the enterprise than ever before. Development organizations are increasingly looking for a Mobile Application Development Platform (MADP) that can support their needs for both current and future projects. It’s a broad field and vendors offer a wide array of capabilities. Here are 10 of the best, identified by Gartner as leaders in the field.

Acquired by SAP in June, Syclo initially specialized in field service and enterprise asset management (EAM) applications for ruggedized devices, but has over the years extended the reach of its platform to all popular mobile OSes. However, enterprises with needs around EAM and field-service-based users are likely to get the most out of Syclo. Its Agentry MADP is an excellent platform for B2E applications, and it now supports many B2C requirements as well. Agentry is especially good at supporting hybrid applications that behave like native applications and Web-oriented implementations.

When it first debuted in 2007, Kony focused on consumer-facing applications, but has since added B2E capabilities, through organic growth. Kony’s platform is a good fit for projects that require the use of native features on an array of mobile devices. The environment can be used to build apps once for tablets, smartphones, feature phones, mobile browsers and even desktop browsers, and then deploy to all of them.

Part of the nonprofit Software Freedom Conservancy’s jQuery open source project, jQuery Mobile is a good fit for organizations that need an open source mobile Web framework that will allow them to leverage existing jQuery skills. The framework provides the ability to use HTML, JavaScript and CSS to build interactive mobile Web pages for an array of smartphones, and it can be used with PhoneGap to build hybrid mobile applications.